I have mixed feelings about Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. On one side, I want to appreciate the lyrical mastery of the prose; on the other, I’m disgusted at how this very prose portrays our narrator, Humbert Humbert, not as much as a monster as it does a mere protagonist in passing.…
As much as I enjoy classics, I haven’t picked up Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein until around last month. The work spans about 300 pages, making it a fairly short novel. I got through it pretty quickly. Of course, it was interesting reading Frankenstein as how it was intended to be written. I’ve realized that retellings…
“What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry uplike a raisin in the sun?Or fester like a sore—And then run?Does it stink like rotten meat?Or crust and sugar over—like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sagslike a heavy load.Or does it explode?” Langston Hughes in Harlem A Raisin in the Sun…
“Chess isn’t always competitive. Chess can also be beautiful.” Walter Tevis The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis follows the story of a prodigious girl as she explores the world of chess and gradually loses herself to addiction. It is an analytical and fast-paced novel that wraps itself around Elizabeth Harmon’s…
“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.” Chuck Palaniuk The first rule about Fight Club is that you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of the fight club is that you do NOT talk about Fight Club. Only two guys to a…
William Stoner lives a quiet life. After his death, he’s hardly remembered; during his life, he moves from his family’s farm to the University of Missouri, where he becomes a teacher. He falls in love with literature and teaching, but never rises above the rank of an assistant professor; he…
To be perfectly honest, I’ve been holding off on reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower for a while. The reason was that I found the first few pages virtually unreadable. The prose was too stiff, too rigid to navigate the passage smoothly. I get that the author was trying…
To say that this book broke my heart is an understatement. It did that, and more. It crushed it into oblivion, absolutely ground up its pieces. All because of the masterfully encrypted idea of helplessness, the idea that even if what is happening to us is so obviously unjust, we…